


naya t'la'tusa na'paki-panu (mourning song for a lost planet)

by Anonymous



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 20:38:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17251019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Amanda Grayson is a star without a planet, impact craters flaring bright with loss as she continues spinning, spinning, alone in the black.





	naya t'la'tusa na'paki-panu (mourning song for a lost planet)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allyndra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyndra/gifts).



> An (extremely) (extremely) late fill for the AUEX 2018. A thousand apologies for not having it anywhere close to on time, but I hope you have a wonderful new year!!

Amanda Grayson is a star without a planet, impact craters flaring bright with loss as she continues spinning, spinning, alone in the black.

The rest of the survivors—the rest of Vulcan—have each other, and the low-level psychic connection that links them all, but Amanda lost even that the minute Sarek dropped out of range of the transporter. She knows Spock is alive, had seen him immediately after on the Enterprise's transport pad, staring unseeingly at the spot where his father should have materialized, but Sybok? Michael? Both are lost to her, a mystery she hasn't been subjected to for over thirty years.

She's in a haze for the rest of the maiden voyage of this young, young crew, watching Spock spin out, shatter, and reform every time he remembers the gaping maw where Vulcan and his father used to be.

There's a man in blue down in the remains of the MedBay, harried and sharp-tongued, who seems to slow down, smooth as honey and as implacable as molasses, whenever he sees Amanda or any of the rest of the Vulcan survivors. He says his name—politely, with a handshake; loudly, shouted into a comm with frustration and affection—but she can't remember it for the life of—

For the life of her.

She thinks about it, for a moment: what would she be willing to trade, to have Sarek back? To have Vulcan back? How many of the shocked and grieving beings around her are thinking the same things, but with different names?

Amanda's sitting on a powered down bio-bed when the news of Nero's plan and Captain Pike's location comes in, ringing through the shipwide comms in a voice she almost recognizes, can almost put a face to. At this point, she's in danger of collapsing in on herself, just leaning up against a wall near a comm unit, setting it to cycle through Sybok and Michael's codes, all the ones she can remember, waiting for someone alive to pick up. She's shaken from that, though, by the loud and strident sounds of English being spoken by someone who is aware of how heavily accented they sound, but simply does not—and has never—cared enough to try and minimize it.

"I will not stand—Sulyek, stop flapping about, you're Vulcan, not a bird—Where is T'Manda?"

"Here, T'Pau," Amanda says wearily, a faint flicker of amusement sparking as the Vulcan matriarch pushes her way through the milling crowd of 'fleet personnel and refugees crowding the MedBay—the 'fleeties because they're trying to clear debris and give assistance, the refugees because they have nowhere else to go and no one to tell them to if they did—to come to a stop in front of her.

T'Pring, Amanda notes, is standing just a few steps behind, her eyes running over her grandmother in fits and starts, as if she's trying to reassure herself that T'Pau is really there.

"Ah," T'Pau says, banishing—at least in Amanda's mind—any doubts about her continued health. "T'Manda." She bows, deep and low. "Our sincerest apologies for the breadth and depth of your loss," she says in Vulcan, seemingly ignorant of the hush rippling out from where they are. "You may not hear it, but all of our hearts weep and wail for you as they would any other. You will always have a place with us, wherever we end up, should you wish it."

Amanda blinks in stunned shock. She is—was?— respected, potentially even liked by most of the Vulcans she sees—saw—day-to-day, but never has anyone so high up the social structure—apart from Sarek—treated her with such consideration, such honor, such compassion.

It's this, more than anything, more than Spock coming down to speak with her a few minutes later, telling of a mission he must complete, of a danger he cannot help but face, more than her continuing inability to reach Sybok or Michael, that sets her off into a flood of tears.

T'Pau holds her while she weeps, softly keening the start to an old mourning song, from before Surak, and calm, and peace. The words speak of misery, of howls and fits of grief-fueled rage, the rending of clothes, the gnashing of teeth, the stubborn and insistent memory of those lost by those left behind. T'Pring joins her on a higher line, then a Vulcan she's never seen before, and another, and another, until the whole MedBay stops, transfixed, as what remains of Vulcan sings their fallen down into the black.

Even Spock, who's never been one for singing, adds the rasp of his almost-tenor after stumbling into this impromptu moment, his eyes catching Amanda's through the crowd. They glisten with unshed tears, which is fine, Amanda thinks. Here and now, she can cry enough for the both of them.

~~~

Michael is able to break through the communications black-out just after they limp back into inhabited space, riding the wave of official messages and interview requests currently bombarding the lower decks Comms officers to reach the small vidscreen that's been linked to Amanda's codes just for this purpose.

"Amanda?" Her voice comes through, low and rough around the edges. Michael's sitting on what looks like the bunk in her quarters in a set of worn blue PT gear, her hair wrapped loosely in a scarf.

"Oh, Michael, thank—" Amanda stops, tears welling up somewhere behind her eyes again. Michael leans forward, the picture wavering a bit as the PADD she must be using shifts on the bed.

"Amanda?" Michael repeats, "Are you alright? I heard—We've all heard—and a few days ago I heard this scream on the bridge, Saru said I collapsed like a ton of bricks, and when I came to I had more missed calls than I've ever had and I couldn't—I couldn't reach anyone."

"Spock is fine," Amanda says, haltingly. "Sybok I haven't—"

"He's fine," Michael interrupts. "Or, at least, as fine as he ever is. He comm'd me a few days ago, ship-time, asking why he couldn't hail you on any frequency, Vulcan or Federation."

Amanda's eyes close, almost on their own volition, and she breathes deep. Sarek may be gone, but her—their—children are fine, are alive and breathing.

"I'll call him," she says, opening her eyes again. "Let him know what's been happening. His comm codes are the same?"

"Yes," Michael says, "But, Amanda—"

"Sarek's dead," Amanda says, knowing what Michael's trying to ask without asking, as if maybe, if she avoided saying it outright, it somehow wouldn't be true. "The teleporter lost him, in the collapse. I—Your brother and I watched it happen."

Michael's eyes are wide, her face still holding on to the emotionless affect she'd worked so hard to master, the vidscreen cutting off the tell-tale curl-and-flex of her hands when she's distressed. She opens her mouth, as if to speak, but the words don't seem to be able to come.

Amanda sits there with Michael on the other end of the call, both of them quiet and grieving, the blue light of the vidscreen flickering, and does her best to comfort her across the vast, silent emptiness of space.

~~~

Six weeks later, Amanda finds herself dirtside, struggling to adjust to the lighter burden of Earth's gravity after so many years away, and trying to lead the mass rehabilitation of a species from a farmhouse in Iowa.

She's on the porch of a two-level farmhouse, sitting in a creaking glider that hangs from half-rusted chains, wrapped in a blanket against the bite of the pre-dawn chill, staring out at the expanse of muddy field dotted with i'rikwonek ha-kel in front of her. They're synthetic, and considerably warmer than most of Vulcan's climes ever required, but they're the closest thing to the traditional nomadic homes of the pre-Surak culture the refugees can find, outside of a cultural museum.

"Here." A mug of steaming liquid—coffee, by the smell of it—is held in front of her face. "I didn't know if you wanted cream or sugar, so I left out both; they're in the kitchen if you need it."

"Black is fine, thank you," Amanda says, taking the mug and relishing the warmth emanating from it as she watches Winona Kirk hitch herself up on to the porch railing. They're on Kirk property—would be, she's been told, until they hit the state road or the canyon, whichever comes first—which had, prior to becoming a refugee camp, seemed like it hadn't been doing much at all.

Her son's erstwhile Captain—a smiling blonde boy with eyes as old as his mother's—had apparently arranged for it, though Winona had laughed when Amanda had mentioned it, the first day they were there.

"That boy stays silent for months on end, then calls me out of the blue and 'arranges' for me to become sole trustee of a people without a planet?" Amusement looked good on Winona Kirk, lightened her shoulders, smoothed out a few lines. "No, I took y'all on because I've got the land—which I'm certainly not using—and I've got the experience, which you all will certainly need.

"Not to say that Jim doesn't know that," she'd continued, "but honestly. 'Arranged'. I'm not furniture"

'The experience', it turned out, was the knowledge of how to take a devastated population and make them whole again, make them feel like beings who were wanted and belonged and deserved to keep on doing both.

It's a...uniquely specialized skill set, and Amanda burns to know how and where Winona first acquired and applied it, but that pales considerably next to her relief that the remnants of Vulcan are able to take advantage of it.

"It's going to start getting colder," Winona says, after a long bout of peaceful quiet. The sun's started to gild the treeline hazily with orange and gold. "We get snow early here, and hail, if it decides to be extra nasty."

"I grew up on Earth," Amanda reminds her. "It may have been the part of Arizona that's never even heard of the dream of snow, but still.

"Besides," she adds wryly, "I did undergrad in Seattle, I know all kinds of wet weather."

Winona snorts. "Explains why you moved to a desert planet."

"Not all of it," Amanda says softly. "There were mountains along the fault-lines, the tall ones you only get from tectonic unrest, high enough that snow could form without melting. Sarek loved—"

She stops, breathes deep, still too used to Vulcan standards of etiquette to cry in front of her host.

"George never wanted to leave Earth," Winona says, her face carefully turned towards the field of tents. Her tone is at least as strangled as Amanda's, if not more—she doesn't think Winona's ever talked about this before, at least not out loud. "It was me who wanted to see the universe, bounce from planet to planet, make contact with new species, new galaxies, new ways of life."

She shifts in her seat, swings a leg up to help brace her back against one of the support columns. In that moment, with the strengthening light glinting off her hair, the lines in her face obscured, a crookedly sad smile crinkling the corner of her eyes, Amanda can see James Kirk so strongly that the gaps that George must have filled in almost hurt.

"And then he died," Winona finishes simply, "In the place I asked him to go to, because of the people I wanted us to become, and left me with Sam and Jim and a universe that was chock-full of everything but the one thing I wanted."

"How do you—" Amanda starts, and her throat is tight again, wavering on the edge of tears she's wearyingly familiar with, "How do you get past that?"

She swallows, shoves the emotion back down to a manageable level, continues: "He was my friend, my partner, my husband, it was my planet, my people, my home for more years than Earth ever was, how do you—"

"You don't," Winona says, bluntly but not unkindly. "It's not a wound that heals, just one that scabs over, fades away until the first hard rain, or the bite of fall, or the next time you catch a glimpse of something the exact color of their eyes, and then suddenly it's back and hurts all over again."

Silence falls again, and if Amanda's face is wet, she can blame it on sunlight that's now shining directly into her eyes, tinging the world a familiar rust-red.

**Author's Note:**

> based on the prompt/premise of Sarek dying instead of Amanda


End file.
